Walking on Sunshine

I had a friend come to town to visit me for the weekend. She was supposed to leave on Sunday, but her car wouldn't start. We had to get it towed to a shop, which left her stranded in Edmonton until it was fixed. I was thrilled, to be honest, I hardly ever get to see her, so to have her here for a whole week was really awesome.

At some point this past week, I had one of my sisters, her friend, and my friend over for dinner. This was crazy for me. I am used to cooking for one, not cooking for four! This particular sister of mine loves a chicken dish that I got from Everyday Food.

Indian Spiced Braised Chicken

1 1/2 pounds chicken thighs, boneless and skinless

1 medium onion,thinly sliced

1 can (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes drained

2 Tbsp. tomato paste

1 Tbsp. ginger, grated from 1″ piece

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp. ground coriander

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup yogurt, plain

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

1/2 teaspoons garam masala, optional

Cooked white rice, for serving

In a 5 or 6 quart slow cooker, stir together chicken, onion, tomatoes, tomato paste, ginger, garlic, coriander, and cayenne; season with salt and pepper. Cook on high for 4 hours (or 8 hours on low) until fork tender. Stir in yogurt, cilantro and, if using, garam masala. Serve with rice.
Generally I make this in the oven. I start by browning the chicken in oil, then I remove the chicken from the Dutch oven. Then I saute the onion for a minute or two, add the garlic, ginger and spices, and saute it for a minute longer. Then I add the tomato paste and melt it in, then I add the canned tomatoes, and the chicken. Also add 2 cups of water or chicken stock. Bake @ 350 F for 2 hours. Remove from the oven, stir in the yogurt and garam masala. I omit cilantro because I am not a fan of it.

Note, I have made this in the slow cooker and I do brown the chicken, and saute the onions, garlic, ginger and spices.

I also serve this with na'an bread or pitas.

My stranded friend and I also went for dinner last night. We were trying to pick somewhere in West Edmonton Mall to eat at and we settled on The Cactus Club Cafe. Both of us ordered the Butternut Squash Ravioli. The ravioli filled with a puree of butternut squash, and it's served with seared scallops, crispy sage and pine nuts. The sauce is a truffle beurre blanc.

This was soooo good. We stared at it for five minutes before eating it because it was so beautiful. (Actually it was because they had taken our forks away when clearing the calamari).

Seriously though, who wouldn't want to eat this??

Keep Me Warm

On December 7, 2008, I was on a cruise ship in Miami, heading towards the Western Caribbean. The weather was very warm. I was lying out on a lounger, and when it got too hot I would either jump into the on board pool or have a frozen drink to cool down.

Fast forward to December 7, 2009. I am in the non-exotic city of Edmonton. The temperature is -30 C. The heat in my office isn't working, and my office is a balmy 10 or 11 C. (50 F for my American readers).

I wasn't prepared for a chilly office, so I hadn't worn a lot of warm clothes. My feet had hurt for a bit in the morning, but they didn't hurt again until I got into my very warm car. After a few minutes I realized my feet had gotten so cold during the day they went numb, and were now just starting to thaw out.

So after this very chilly day I was in the mood for something very warm. I had debated soup, but then I thought that maybe something with a bit of spice would be the best thing to fully warm myself up. I started searching the Internet for different curries. I found a recipe for one, but I feel that I changed enough of the recipe that it's my own.

Madras Curry

Ingredients:

- 14 oz can of full fat coconut milk

- 4 tbs madras curry paste (I used one made by Patak's)

- 3 tbs brown sugar

- 2 tbs fish sauce

- package of chicken breasts, cut up into small pieces

- medium onion, diced

- 3 carrots, sliced

- 3 handfuls of cashews, separated

- bunch of green onions, chopped

To make:

1) pour the can of coconut milk into a wok, or large skillet. Heat until hot, but do not bring to a boil

2) Add the curry paste and mix until dissolved. Add the brown sugar and fish sauce and mix until dissolved.

3) Add the chicken and two handfuls of cashews, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes or until chicken is fully cooked

4) Add the onion and carrot and stir long enough for the veggies to heat through.

5) Remove from heat. Top with remaining cashews and green onions. Serve alongside jasmine or basmati rice. I also served it with mini pita rounds.

This was very simple and very tasty. I brought the leftovers into work, and one of my East Indian coworkers confessed this morning that he had ate some of my leftovers because he wanted to see how a "white person would make a curry". He said it tasted good, but wasn't spicy enough. I would say that it was fairly warm, but at the same time I wouldn't have called it spicy either. Delicious, nonetheless. (He suggested adding jalepenos to make it spicier, if anyone wants to make it that way)

To make the cute rice tower take a ramekin, or cup, or some sort of holding device about the size of serving of rice you desire. Spray it with a non-stick spray and pack the rice in gently. Packing it in gently means to not just spoon the rice in, and not to pack it in as hard as you can squish, but to gently press in the rice. Place a plate on top of the ramekin and flip it over, so now the ramekin is resting upside down on the plate. Lift the ramekin off, and you have a rice tower. Serve immediately because the rice tower will start to fall down in a matter of minutes.

I am lucky enough to work in an office that allows me to bring my dog at work. This is a shot of her on her makeshift bed that is on my desk. She is so adorable, I couldn't help but post it!

(I Just) Died in Your Arms Tonight

I think I am going to have to make my next week a light week. Most of this past week has been laden in sugar, butter, and all things delicious. I'm a firm believer in "all things in moderation, including moderation", yet there hasn't been much moderation at all lately.

Before I start attempting a "light week", I will finish off "slowly blocking off my arteries" week.

The vegetable for my supper tonight was beets, roasted beets. I stick whole beets in a baking sheet with about an inch of water @ 375 F. The beets I was using were on the large side so it took about an hour for them to be fork tender. Count on 40 minutes for small beets, 60 minutes for medium to medium large beets, and 80 minutes for the money beets.

Those of you who watch the Office might remember Dwight talking about money beets when he said "First rule in roadside beet sales, put the most attractive beets on top. The ones that make you pull the car over and go, 'Wow. I need this beet right now.' Those are the money beets"

After the beets are fork tender, let them cool for about ten minutes so they are cool enough to handle. Then peel and quarter them. Use a paring knife to aid in peeling. Sprinkle with balsamic vinegar, and season with salt and pepper.

For my meat part of dinner, I made my all time favorite pan-fried New York strip loin. The recipe is from Everyday Food. I take a skillet and on med-high I heat up enough extra virgin olive oil to cover the bottom of the skillet. Season the steak with salt and pepper on both sides. Place in the pan for 3 minutes, flip and cook for another 3. This will make a medium rare steak. (And really that's the only way to eat it). Remove the steak from the skillet and place under foil for 5 minutes. In the pan pour 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar, and a 1/4 cup Dijon mustard. Pour the sauce over the steak after its 5 minutes resting period. (Cut into the steak before it rests and you are really doing yourself a big disservice)

Wow. I'm not going to lie, I will eat this sauce with a spoon. It is that good. Then again, I am an addict.
The final part of my meal was ravioli with a brown butter balsamic sauce. Yes, everything had balsamic in it, I did just admit I was an addict!

Cook the ravioli according to its package directions (I would use cheese ravioli as a meat one might overwhelm the very simple sauce). Meanwhile heat 6 tbs of butter in a saucepan, until the foam has subsided and the butter has turned a golden amber color. Remove from the heat and let cool for 1 minute. Add 2 tbs of balsamic vinegar and season with salt and pepper. When the pasta is done, drain it, and toss with the sauce. Top with Parmesan cheese.

I forgot to add Parmesan though. The pasta was very delicious and I imagine if I had added the Parmesan it would have even been better.

Picture

I spent a good portion on Saturday looking at other food blogs. Mainly trying to figure out how to make my pictures better. I'm not going to complain about my camera, but I feel that it's strength might not necessarily be close up food shots. However, I think I have finally learned how to make them better.

The biscuits from the other night:

This was the picture I previously posted. Sure it looks tasty...but is it as good as this biscuit?

Hopefully what I read over the weekend will make the food in the pictures look better. Though I do think there is still room for improvement.

Heaven

If heaven had a taste, I believe it would be dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is an incredibly good caramel sauce that is popular in South America. To sound smarter than I am, I googled dulce de leche so I could blog interesting tidbits about it. The first five websites all had different terms of what dulce de leche meant in English (it's Spanish). So I gave up on that idea.

The websites basically said that dulce de leche meant candy or caramel made from milk. I guess it doesn't really matter what it means, it sounds better in Spanish anyway. Who would want "candy from milk" over dulce de leche? (dull-chay de lesh-ay).

Making dulce de leche is simple. It takes 30 seconds to prepare, but 2 hours to cook, plus cooling time, and the biggest catch is it requires checking on (you can't just set it and forget it).

You start by taking one (or more) cans of sweetened condensed milk. (Please make sure you didn't grab evaporated milk, I did this the first time and believe me, dulce de leche is not the end result).

Place the can, with the label removed, in a large pot of water and fill it with water until it's FULLY SUBMERGED.

Now you might be wondering why I didn't take the time to clear away the red pot before taking the first picture. Or why I made FULLY SUBMERGED all caps. This is very very important. The top of the can must always be covered with water. If the top becomes exposed you run the risk of the can exploding. Which at the very best would leave you with a big mess to clean up, at the very worst exploding tin could seriously hurt someone. What does this have to do with the red pot? When making the dulce de leche, the water in the can pot will evaporate, leaving the potential for the can to explode. Keep a separate pot of water simmering the entire time so that you can replenish the water in the pot holding the can.

Bring the water in the can pot to a boil, and then turn the heat down to a simmer. I have made this a few times now and I noticed when it was at an actual simmer the milk didn't caramelize enough. Keep it at a low boil. My definition of a low boil is that water still bubbles to the top, but there's no rolling boil. I kept the stove at medium.

Keep it at this low boil for two hours. Making sure to replenish the water (and then replenish the replenishing water as needed).

After two hours, remove the pot from the heat and let it cool slowly. Why? By immediately taking it out of the water you could shock the can and cause it to explode.

I can almost hear someone saying "Rebekah, with all this possible exploding going on, is dulce de leche really worth it?" I am replying with "Did you not hear me call this heaven??" I do not toss the word heaven around, as a description of food, lightly. I apply it to things like creme brulee, exceptionally good quality ice cream, mushrooms browned in butter, bacon, or a medium rare teriyaki sirloin from the Keg. Please people, give me some credit.

Once the the dulce de leche has cooled sufficiently, open the can and you will have:

You can use dulce de leche on many things. It can be spread on toast, or muffins. Pour it on top of angel food cake. Eat it out of the can with a spoon...not that I have done this...

I use it for an ice cream topper.

Let it Snow!

I woke up this morning and my half-closed eyes looked between the cracks of the blinds and I saw snow. The scene reminded me of Christmas movies, ones where there is no snow on Christmas Eve, but when people wake up the next morning there was a Christmas miracle and it snowed six feet worth overnight.

(I just think this picture is so cute)

I have underground parking, and the beauty of this is that I don't have to scrape off my car in the morning. And my car is warm without me having to idle it. (And right now my key fobs have been driving me mental by not working half the time, so that is a good thing)

The snow and road conditions didn't bother me until I had made it to Tim Hortons. As I slowed down to pull into their parking lot, my car resisted stopping and was sliding. I am enough of a coffee addict that my biggest fear was that I was going to slide past the parking lot entrance, and not that I was going to crash into someone else.

My day at work was fairly uneventful, but it was long. I left at 18:45 after having started at 7:15. Side note: I prefer the 24 hour clock. If I can get my clocks to read 24 hours, I do. Those of you who don't know how to convert the 24 hour clock into the regular boring time, you subtract 12 from the number. 18-12 = 6, therefore I left work at 6:45 pm.

The ride home was terrifying. One of my biggest fears is winter driving. I have been in several car accidents in the winter (NONE OF THEM BEING MY FAULT!) So I am a big bundle of nerves in the winter. My car also has a mind of its own. Even if I start from a complete stop at an incredibly slow rate, I will always spin out.

Now at this point I was at work for a little over eleven hours. I'm stressed out. And work also had me out in the snow and it got into my shoes so my feet were so cold they hurt. I wanted nothing more than to get home and never leave my place again.
I stopped at Sobeys first. I love Sobeys. I go there probably 4 or 5 times a week, and I pretty well know where everything is. So much, that when I make a grocery list I can pretty well put my list in order. I don't just mean produce, to meat, to deli, to frozen section. I mean I can put the produce in order of where the produce is located so that I just walk down the sections without having to backtrack. (yes, I do know I have no life)

I thought that the most perfect way to get over this day was a hot bowl of soup, with homemade biscuits, and blondies to finish out the meal.

For the soup, I made a soup adapted from a cheese and potato soup in a Williams-Sonoma cookbook.

Cheesy Potato Soup

Ingredients:

4-6 slices of bacon, chopped

2 leeks, thinly sliced and rinsed

3 large baker's potatoes, peeled and cubed

3 cups chicken broth

2 cups milk

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

To make:

1) brown the bacon to your desired crispness in a medium saucepan. Remove bacon and set aside on paper towel to drain

2) In the leftover bacon fat (remove some of it if there is a lot), saute the leeks. Note, you should include the white, the light green, and the darker than light green part of the leeks, but not the dark green part.

3) add the potatoes to the pot and stir so that each cube gets coated in the bacon

4) pour in the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for about 20 min to half hour, until the potatoes are fork tender. Maybe simmer is the wrong word, keep the heat on about medium.

5) When the potatoes are tender pour in the milk and bring the soup back up to a boil. Remove from heat. At this point I use a potato masher to mash up the potatoes. I like my soup to have pieces of potatoes and leeks. If you like yours completely smooth you can blend it.

6) stir in the cheese

7) divide into bowls and top them with the cooked bacon.

I also made biscuits tonight, and the recipe for biscuits left me with and extra half cup of whipping cream. I didn't want it to go to waste so I used 1/2 cup whipping cream and 1.5 cups of milk instead of the 2 cups of milk in the soup.

I have made this soup about eight or nine times, and I have to say this was the best one I have had. I am crediting the cream for this, and it is unlikely I will make this soup without the cream in the future.

The biscuits. I was nervous about the biscuits. The last time I attempted a biscuit, they turned out more like rocks. My sister called them biscotti biscuits. They were not good. Tonight's though, were amazingly good. So light and fluffy, and they were EASY. I hate baking and this recipe was simple for me. Chef Michael Smith's Cheddar Biscuits can be found here

Lastly... the blondies. Blondies are most commonly described as brownies made with brown sugar, not chocolate. I made Toffee Crunch Blondies. The blondies have chocolate chips and toffee bits in them, and then are topped with more toffee bits. Now, the recipe states that it makes 36 bars. I don't know who was deranged enough to cut them so tiny that one would get 36 out of a pan, but I made mine so that I had 16.


Tonight's meal was so good that I couldn't even wait until tomorrow to blog about it. I have plenty of dishes waiting to be written about, but this one pushed its way to the front. I was dead tired (still am) but I fought to stay awake long enough to post this.

Now I am heading for bed.

Too Much

A movie that I really enjoy is My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If you aren't familiar with it, the movie is about a woman, Toula, who is from a large Greek family, who pressures her to marry a nice Greek boy, and make lots of Greek babies. Toula ends up meeting and falling for a man who is not Greek, to the dismay of her entire family. One of my favorite parts is when Toula's aunt invites Toula and Ian (the non-Greek) for dinner. Toula says to her "He's a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat". And the aunt looks horrified (as would I) and says "He don't eat no meat? It's ok I make lamb".

The other day I was talking to someone I work with and I had asked if he was going to have a turkey dinner for Christmas and he said no because his wife was a vegetarian. It took all my will power not to say "She don't eat no meat?"

I am a carnivore through and through. I can't think of very many meals of mine that don't contain an animal of some sort, my very favorite being beef. Last weekend was a good weekend for beef. On Friday night I went to dinner at The Keg, which is one of my all time favorite places to eat. I ordered the prime rib. On Saturday I had my friend and her family over for dinner and I served Beef Bourguignon. That same family invited me over on Sunday for prime rib. By Monday I was feeling a little beefed-out and was planning on making chicken. Then I saw a recipe for chimichangas and I had to make it, so once again I had beef. I drew inspiration from the recipe I had found, and changed it enough that I can call this one my own.

Chimichangas

To make the filling:

1) I browned a package of ground beef

2) I added a can of chili beans (it included kidney, navy and a third kind)

3) I also added a pack of taco seasoning and the amount of water it instructed to add

Take a tortilla, place some of the filling in the middle, top with grated cheese (I used cheddar) and wrap it up like a burrito. I did this by folding the bottom up, folding in the right side as tight as possible, folding down the top, and bringing the left side over to the right as tight as possible.

Heat some oil (I used safflower) in a skillet over med-high. Just enough to over the pan. Place a burrito in the oil and cook until browned, flip and brown the other side.

Serve with salsa and sour cream.

(is anyone else thinking about that part in Napolean Dynamite when Summer says "So, who wants to eat chimichangas next year? Not me")

Since I had company I followed up dinner with dessert. I made the Bananas Foster, from Everyday Food. This particular recipe involved heating dark rum and brown sugar together until they form a syrup. Then placing cut bananas into the syrup to heat them through. It's served with ice cream. Delicious. Sadly my pictures turned out pretty crappy, so if you want to look at them all delicious-like, click on the link.